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5 Reasons You Should Leave GoDaddy (And How)

In the last few years, GoDaddy has come under fire plenty of times – and for plenty of reasons. Not only has the company used sexual advertising several times to promote its services, which has led to backlashseveral times, but in early 2011 then-CEO Bob Parsons killed a wild elephant in Zimbabwe, which many believed was just another sign that the company was willing to engage in unethical practices. (This includes buying domain names users search for and then inflating the value of these domains when users return to purchase them so GoDaddy makes a larger profit on the transaction.) In late 2011, GoDaddy also initially supported SOPA, which also indicated the company was not willing to support its customers freedom of speech and activity on the internet. (GoDaddy reversed their opinion shortly after a call to boycott the company because of this.)

Today, GoDaddy lost control of its services almost entirely, coming under attack by apparently Anonymous (updated: it wasn’t – see below) causing almost every one of its hosted websites to go offline, along with most of GoDaddy’s email service and some of the domains registered through GoDaddy.

Why millions of websites are still hosted with GoDaddy is beyond me, but enough is enough. If you’re ready to leave GoDaddy – whether because of their advertising tactics that they just won’t change, poor judgment by its executive team, unethical business practices, carelessness for its existing customers or inability to control/maintain its own services properly – here are a few great alternatives to register/transfer your domain names and hosting.

Domain Name Registration:

Iwantmyname.com: According to GOOD.com, “this site tries to make the front end as simple as possible,” says Doug Sellers, GOOD’s director of technology. “They make it easy to buy, and the interface is really user-friendly.” Domain names begin at $10 for simple names such as a .com, but can be more expensive if you choose a trendy or custom URL ending (like an .ly).

Gandi.net: While this site’s interface isn’t as simple as Iwantmyname.com, Gandi.net is almost obsessive about privacy. As Sellers says, “It shows you own the site, and are not just renting it from them, very clearly.” Gandi.net also provides hosting at various levels depending on your needs.

Domain Name Service:

DYN.com: After you have registered your domain name, you will want to use a DNS like DYN.com to help you controls the DNS zone and its associated DNS records. DYN, which is used by companies like Trulia, Quora, and Squarespace, also helps power the email associated with your domain.

Hosting:

Dreamhost.com: For those looking for a low-cost alternative to GoDaddy, Dreamhost is a great solution and is optimized for those who primarily use hosting to blog using WordPress. Various levels of service are available, including dedicated servers for those at the enterprise level.

Hostgator.com: Similar to Dreamhost, Hostgator offers several hosting plans with comparable pricing to GoDaddy, but with much less downtime – and less controversy, too.

Though GoDaddy came under pressure when it originally supported SOPA and December 29, 2011 was declared a day for ditch GoDaddy as a result, millions still pay every month for its services. While today’s unacceptable downtime won’t be the last straw for some, it will likely be for many of GoDaddy’s customers – and luckily, there are other several much better alternatives that make it easy for any current GoDaddy customer to leave – now.

UPDATE: On Tuesday morning, Scott Wagner, Go Daddy Interim CEO, updated the press that the “The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a “hack” and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.”

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Its all about the “GoDaddy girls coming on set” that makes every kid choose GoDaddy for domains when they are starting out. When you realize that there are plenty of better options then I guess, we are just too lazy to change everything.

I think Godaddy’s sexual advertisements are tacky yet evidently effective. Sex has been selling for all of recorded history and I’m sure for centuries before that. You’re a very attractive looking woman and I’m sure it has helped you in life whether you’ve recognized it as such or not.

I use Godaddy and might switch to one of those other services one day but not because of scantily clad women. I think their hosting interface is clumsy and inefficient.

I’m glad we’re all free to state our opinions in the USA. Bob Parson’s seems slimy, and ranks high on my slimyness chart. But most every guy I know routes 95% of his thoughts through his penis and we’re all pigs somewhat the same to varying degrees. It’s in the human DNA to lust after the opposite sex to preserve the species and most webmasters are male. It will always be capitalized upon by slimy entrepreneurs. Just saying.

I see kellyclay.com is registered and pointing to Godaddy’s DNS. I agree with much of what you have said but I think it’s sort-of hypocritical to tell users to leave when your personal site is with them.